Biz Stone, co-founder of twitter, is among those who have joined the board of directors of Mastodon's new American nonprofit. Announced Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko over the weekend. The service from Mastodon, an open-source decentralized social network and rival to Elon Musk's more to the old twitter of days gone by.
Mastodon only fits that bill a little. Although the service is similar to twitter in many ways, it is supported by a different infrastructure. As part of the “fediverso,” or the open social network made up of interconnected servers that communicate via the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon benefits users who no longer want to be locked into a centralized social network that can be bought and sold to new billionaire owners. . like musk.
Although Mastodon was already established as a non-profit organization in Germany in 2021, the creation of a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the US will allow the company to receive tax-deductible donations and other financial support. The change also comes as Mastodon has inexplicitly lost its nonprofit status in Germany.
“…we have received notice from the same tax office that has removed our nonprofit status,” Rochko wrote on the Mastodon blog. “This happened without warning or explanation. Earlier this year we went through a successful tax audit, which actually resulted in some favorable adjustments since we have been paying too much tax. Our tax advisor immediately filed an appeal against the decision, but so far we have no new information,” he said.
Mastodon's daily operations were not affected by this change, as the majority of its revenue comes from the crowdfunding platform Patreon. It also received donations from Jeff Atwood and Mozilla worth $100,000 each, allowing the company to hire a third full-time developer this year.
However, its establishment as a non-profit organization allows Mastodon to communicate how it is different from other social media companies. While becoming a nonprofit in the US will help Mastodon regain its status, it wants to remain outside the EU.
In addition to Biz Stone, other board members include Esra'a Al Shafei, human rights advocate and founder of Majal.org; Karien Bezuidenhout, openness advocate and experienced board member of sustainable social enterprises; Amir Ghavi, partner at law firm Fried Frank, where he is co-head of the technology transactions practice; and Felix Hlatky, Mastodon's CFO since 2020, who originally incorporated the project as a nonprofit LLC in Germany and helped it raise additional funds.
